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Formatting for Print and eBook

It’s been hard. Formatting has been really tiring. Getting the margins right is one thing but I had a problem with embedding the fonts. No one told me it was going to be this hard. I just figured you download a font. You use it and voila. How on earth would I have known that when you convert from word docx to PDF the fonts won’t transfer over. I did not know that. And I was dying. Because the font in the book is on the book cover. And I needed a PDF version because to get it to print, the websites only ask for PDF versions and not microsoft word doc. Createspace does allow you to upload in microsoft word doc, but they convert the document as well, and when they do it, my special downloaded font is changed to some generic font.

But I thought I found a way because when I convert from Pages to PDF, the fonts are embedded, so there are no issues on that front. THE PROBLEM IS: I DIDN’T FORMAT THE PAGES (Apple’s microsoft word). AND IT’S REALLY, REALLY HARD TO FORMAT ON PAGES BECAUSE THEY DON’T ALLOW FOR MIRRORING PAGES.

Dying.

And Google didn’t really provide me with much. Actually, a lot of forum comments said that it’s not possible to embed the fonts.

Kill me.

There was really one way out. Use a generic font.

I could hear my heart break.

Until. I was really trying all sorts of ways of saving and shit that forum users were saying and one of it actually freaking worked.

Take notes: If you’re using microsoft words on Mac, go to print.

Click the dropdown menu.

Save as PDF. And voila your fonts are embedded.

In case you're wondering, Ciel Margot Wolff is my next project.
Hehe. But I'm changing the character names and the settings.

Anyway other formatting notes for print:

1. If you want to add page numbers and your name/book name on the footer/header but you don’t want every page to have it, you have to insert SECTION BREAK instead of Page Break.

2. If when you convert to PDF, microsoft word tells you that header/footer is out of print margin. Go to the header/footer layout

And change the before and after. I changed both to 0.75″ but of course it highly depends on what the margins of your book are. TFYP is 5.5″ by 8.5″.

3. You can set your own margins but I got the 5.5×8.5 template from Createspace. But it’s quite tedious if you want to get a template from Createspace, cause you need to create an account and everything. I found this website that has the margins for the popular book sizes. https://www.balboapress.com/FAQ/Manuscript.aspx

I don’t know if you can spot it. But see the white space? Let’s name them by columns.

Because they are mirrored pages A and D are supposed to be the same width while B and C are supposed to be the same width. A/D > B/C. But this formatting just doesn’t look right. This one looks like D> A> B> C. But there were no issues with the margins. The margins were right. So I couldn’t for the life of me understand why the hell the spacing widths were weird. And so I downloaded a blank template from Createspace again to see what the hell was the difference between the blank template’s doc and mine. And I saw it. At Layout.

this piece of shit ruined my life. It should be 0″. I have no goddamn idea why, how, when it became 0.24″. And I actually don’t know how changing it to 0″ makes A=D and B=C but yay.

Formatting for eBook is a whole other ordeal. At first, I was going to use this Vellum software. You just have to import the Word doc into Vellum and it converts it to an eBook. Voila. Until it’s not ‘Voila’. Somehow, I’d split my chapters with bullet points instead of asterisks, my chapter splits didn’t show up on the eBook Vellum created – which is my fault. But there were some other things Vellum doesn’t pick up on.

see the ‘cme find me’. Well, because this part isn’t formatted in the same way the rest of the text before and after it is (There’s no indent) but Vellum doesn’t realise its a different format. Instead, it puts it all together with the rest of the text. To get around this, I had to find every instance where there was a change in format and blockquote it. But other than that, Vellum’s pretty fine. But I can’t remember why I didn’t use Vellum. I had a reason. I forgot. Instead, I formatted my Pages to use for eBook. (Yea, I had my manuscript on word doc, pages and vellum, killed myself when I saw an error somewhere and had to change it on three docs).

1. Apparently, you also need a content page for eBooks. But a simple Google search can assist with making a content page. The thing to note, however, is this: on Pages when you choose to turn on the Content Page, the file seeks out areas where you’ve used the Header Style. So supposing (like I had) you didn’t use the pre-made Header Styles offered by Pages for your chapter headings, you have to add the style you used for your chapter headings into the list of Styles (or you can change your chapter headings to the Heading Styles offered by Pages). So I created a few styles, one for Title, one for Chapter Headings. And when you generate the Content Page, Pages will ask you to choose which Styles to sieve the whole file for. So you choose the ones you created. I have no idea why I chose to format the eBook on Pages but I did. I’m thinking microsoft word has a similar concept for the content page?

2. Also, a Pages file is not an ebook. So here’s what I did, I exported the file from Pages to ePub. Something that I’m really glad Pages does. Epub done. But the other eBook ver is Mobi for Kindle. For this, I downloaded Calibre, a free tool. Calibre converts PDF/ePub to Mobi while retaining your original file. So, that’s that.

3. Might I add there was no formatting (margins wise and header/footer wise) for the ebook. It was A4. Cause I was very lazy. And I didn’t think it mattered. And I still don’t. Because when I opened it on a Kindle reader, the pages of the book were constrained to the size of the Kindle. My 192 A4 size page was a whopping 6092 pages on a tablet reader. So I couldn’t see why I should format the A4 size into a 5.5 x 8.5. Ain’t gon do shit. I think. Correct me if I’m wrong.

4. Also something to note: when formatting for print, you add empty pages, because you want to account for the backside of the page. Delete those empty pages as each page comes out as an individual page people have to skip on their digital reader.

I believe that’s about it. I can’t remember other issues at the moment.